Featured Retribultion Theology

Not at all. I believe you are too invested in your tradition to shed your presuppositions. I think it not impossible but highly improbable. It would be like Origen abandoning his Ransom Theory.

 

Scripture sees the Cross as the will of God but only attributes Christ's suffering as by "the hands of godless men". So no, you are not correct. For God to look upon God as sin is a denial of the unchanging nature of God.

 

Serious? You have the categories mixed up.

Those in Adam are judged as being in Adam. Those in Christ judged in Christ.

 

Jesus lay down His life. It was the Father's will. He suffered and died at the hands of godless men. God vindicated Him by raising Him from the dead. Why is Scripture not good enough? Why add to what is there?

 

Then you misunderstand my position. God's wrath towards us was certainly averted. Read your Bible, the righteous are NEVER the objects of God's wrath.

 

And there it is again....this is both unbiblical and (here) unsupported. It is this one error that you have hinged your entire view upon.

 

I don't mean this as an insult. I am saying that you are viewing the Cross through a specific tradition and not allowing the biblical text to speak for itself. I am saying that I do not believe you will abandon this because it is comfortable to you and you are invested in that theory. This is not, and is not meant to be, an insult at all.

It wearies me as well. But all I can do is offer up Scripture.

You also think that God was angry with Jesus and poured out His wrath upon Him, punishing Him as He hung on the cross in perfect obedience so forgive me if I take your thought here with a grain of salt.

 

Again, you are mistaken.

Here is how I arrived at my view:

I had preached a sermon on 1 Peter 1:16 (not for the first time) and outlined God's wrath that was poured out upon Christ while He hung on the cross. I remember saying that God never turned His back on His Son, but looked at Him head on and punished Him for the sins that we had committed. Anyway, at the time I thought the sermon went well. Monday morning I awoke with a great conviction that I had relied on my own tradition. I was shaken. I mean, really shaken. I didn't preach for a couple of years but dedicated that time to studying the Atonement from Scripture. I started out by trying to prove my own presuppositions, which I found impossible. We can look at verses that indicate penal substitution if the context of PSA is assumed, but when it is not it all falls apart.

This is why I do not mean my remarks as an insult but am trying to get you to think. You share those presuppositions. My first was that divine justice demands that sins be punished. And I went down the list from there.I did not read Wright, Carroll, Green, or anyone else in opposition to my view. Instead I read John Piper, J.I. Packer, Joel Beeke, and listened to sermons by Tim Keller and John MacArthur. I still appreciate those men, but I came to realize that they never evidenced the issue at the root of their theories. The reason, of course, is that there exists no biblical evidence. Just like the Ransom Theory, PSA was an articulation of the atonement that fit not the biblical narrative but the narrative contemporary to the scholars that came up with the theories.

We (you and I, and a few others) have been discussing this for over a year. Not once has evidence been given that proved the actual basis of PSA (the contextual framework of the theory). Every passage and every verse given in support of PST thus far has assumed the context provided to be true. But Scripture seems very much to indicate otherwise. The error was introduced long before PSA reached its conclusions.

So if you have taken my language as an insult, or if I have hurt your feelings, then you do have my apology. That was not my intention. Sometimes I suppose my jabs may appear more sincere than intended. But rest your mind at ease, I haven't been "lured away" by some book. Neither do I believe that I have discovered all the answers. I have only discovered one part of my theology that did not fit with Scripture and have tossed it aside so that I will at least not be carrying around traditions and theories I know to be wrong. If you are wondering what happened - I ran into a problem - the doctrine of Sola Scriptura, and it is a problem with which I am unwilling to part.